My new variety of Quercus virginiana, commonly called Southern Live Oak, was discovered by me in 1996. I have given my plant the variety name `CLTF2`. Southern Live Oak trees from seed are extremely variable and often unpredictable in growth shapes, growth rates, leaf characteristics, bark characteristics and branching structure because of its ease in cross pollination with other Southern Live Oak cultivars.
My new variety was selected from a seedling crop of 25,000 acorns planted November 1992. These seeds were produced from open pollination. The seeds came from one specimen I have collected seed from for the past 12 years. After two years of grading, I made the selection of my new variety from a final group of 6,000 trees that had trunk calipers ranging from 4-5 inches. These trees were grown in my nursery in native soil under normal cultivation located in Groveland, Fla. In 1996, my attention was drawn to the new tree due to it having large dark green leaves, naturally occurring central leader with secondary branches having favorable strong branching attachment.
I have successfully reproduced this new variety of Southern Live Oak by means of grafting onto Quercus virginiana seedlings at my nursery in Groveland, Fla. This propagation, and successive asexual propagation by grafting, and observation of the resulting progeny, has proven the characteristics of my new variety of tree to be firmly fixed.